Angels In Disguise Series - 10th Anniversary Edition
Preface
Angels In Disguise Series: A poetic epic tragedy in four acts is a series of poems that began to form a short manuscript (later turned into 'the long poem' format), starting in 1983 when I was not feeling well and went to visit my family doctor. In 1987, I would be told what that strange illness was; I was diagnosed HIV, the virus that is believed to develop into AIDS. I was twenty-seven years old. What transpired from that visit was my new job...to keep on living and beat all odds that were beset before me.
When I turned 40, thirteen years of living with HIV, I was diagnosed with a heart murmur and Hepatitis C (not uncommon for HIV+ people to be diagnosed with) coupled with a complete shutdown of the right side of my heart and needed to undergo open heart surgery. To cure the Hepatitis C, I would HAVE to undergo heart surgery because with a shutdown valve, the medication would definitely set off a heart attack.
Before I could even have open heart surgery, I needed to go through other medical procedures important to have to prevent a heart attack while I was on this treatment program. The first was to take a year for dental work—one evening while eating my favourite Christmas dish, a turkey drumstick, a tooth fell out. Upon a visit to my dentist with a prognosis that I would eventually lose all my teeth, we took the drastic step of pulling all 31 teeth left and have dentures fitted. This would save numerous trips of having retainer adjustments in the future. The next step was to spend three months in rehab for alcohol abuse and nine months as an out-patient partnered with The AA Program.
The two years went by fairly fast; it was the next two years that started my hell. My cardiologist was trying to pull the plug on my heart operation citing age-discriminatory practices, sexuality differences with homophobia gibberish, and being a gay-single male. It was two years of lawyers, ombudsman, health-care staff attitudes, and waiting. I won my case, had open heart surgery, then took a seventy-eight week Hep C treatment program that resulted in me having hallucinations and thoughts of committing suicide. It was a four-year medical tour-de-force for everything.
But the story starts way before I turned 44 and preparing for that day for open-heart surgery; way before 1987 when I was diagnosed with HIV, it started the day I was conceived. Through the foundation of the long poem is a recording of the experience of being over 40, living with HIV and having to go through a procedure to prolong my life. It is also a soul-searching experience of faith, life and facing death. It was not a golden road along the way: full of pain, discrimination, homophobia attitudes and finding the energy and spirituality to continue living, while at the same time I had to confront a past that my nightmares and hallucinations were sending me under the drug induced state I was living in.